Union Square BID finds most of its trash could be put to good use

One of the city's biggest business improvement districts aims to stop feeding garbage dumps.

The Union Square Partnership expects to roll out a prototype in October of a streetside composting bin for pedestrians' food scraps, then launch a full-blown pilot project of the containers next year. The organic-waste receptacles will be just one consequence of a study it conducted with students at Columbia University's Earth Institute that found roughly 85% of the refuse in the dozens of trash cans in and around Union Square Park could be recycled or repurposed.

Uneaten edibles make up a little more than 15% of the trash in the organization's baskets and compactors, the report found, and they can be particularly burdensome to collect, said Monica Munn, the group's director of economic development. Compostable castoffs not only weigh down bags, but they also attract bugs and rats.

"For a lot of reasons we want to get that out of there and send it to a more useful end," Munn said. "That's such a ripe opportunity, so to speak."

Munn and her team have already begun reaching out to businesses to get them to cut back on plastic—particularly straws, utensils and food containers—which makes up about a quarter of the waste stream. But such efforts will be blunted if the commercial district's 344,000 daily visitors have only traditional garbage cans.

"You have your lovely compostable bowl, but there's nowhere for you to put it," Munn said. "So you end up just landfilling it."

The Union Square Partnership spends more than $1 million a year on sanitation, supplementing regular city pickups with contracted services from the company StreetPlus.

A New York City first

The group will study models from around the world before choosing its organics collectors, Munn said. A streetside initiative has not been tried here, although San Francisco and Boulder, Colo., among other cities, have programs in operation.

Munn said the bins should be secure, attractive and inexpensive. The economic development director suggested the program could become a model, like the solar-powered Bigbelly compactors, for other business improvement districts citywide.

"We want to get people energized and empowered when they're throwing out their trash," she said.

The proposal won immediate plaudits from environmentalists. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has its offices just outside the catchment area, praised it as a private-sector complement to recent city efforts to facilitate proper disposal of organic waste. It urged the BID to advise people to throw not only their lunch leftovers in the new bins, but also food waste from home—and to let locals take back some of the resulting fertilizer.

The advocacy group warned that success depends on conspicuous signage, education campaigns and traditional trash bins to prevent contamination of the compost by other trash.

"Composting is very, very important, so they're focusing on a critical issue," said Eric Goldstein, the NRDC's New York City environment director. "Getting public participation is obviously a critical first step."

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